MARGARET L. MERIWETHER, The Kin Who Count: Familyand Society in Ottoman Aleppo, 1770–1840 (Austin: University of Texas Press,1999). Pp. 286. $45 cloth, $22 paper.

Extract

As Margaret Meriwether notes in her Introduction to this well-crafted study, until recently there has been little history of the Middle Eastern family. There were “histories of families,” which is not the same as a solidly researched sub-discipline within the broader field of Middle Eastern history, because these “did not deal with the family as an institution, its evolution over time, nor the relationship between family and society” (p. 2). The difficulty derives in part (as it does for other sub-fields of Middle Eastern history, particularly social history) from problems of sources that are partial, limited, or sometimes non-existent, and often where they do exist are unavailable. There are few written records on certain subjects, particularly private lives. Scholars of social history and anthropology have relied increasingly on the use of Islamic court records as sources for social history. The growing body of works produced from this scholarship has been highly sophisticated, nuanced, and exciting, opening windows into the history of private life in the Middle East. This book is a welcome contribution to this growing field of scholarship.